Teachers Approve Contract With Average Raise Of 5.5%

September 4, 1985|By Prakash Gandhi and M.C. Poertner of The Sentinel Staff

Orange County schoolteachers and other unionized workers have voted in favor of new contracts and pay raises.

Fewer than half of the county's 5,125 teachers voted on the new contract, which, if approved by the school board tonight, will raise the average teacher's pay by $1,050 to about $21,350. This is a 5.5 percent increase. Starting pay would increase $1,000 to $16,000.

A total of 1,568 teachers voted for the offer and 538 voted against it. Most cast their votes last week and balloting ended Tuesday.

John Robinson, executive director of the Classroom Teachers Association and the union's chief negotiator, said he was baffled by the low turnout.

''The vote does not indicate that they are satisfied with the salary,'' he said. ''Deep down teachers feel this was not enough. They just believed this was as much as we were going to get this year.''

Non-instructional school workers, represented by a different union, also voted 467 to 21 to ratify their contract. The agreement calls for an average 5.7 percent pay raise and also must be approved by the school board tonight.

Pay raises for the schoolteachers range from 4 percent to 12 percent -- from $900 to $2,525 -- with most teachers getting about 6 percent. The salary increases will cost about $5.6 million, not counting fringe benefits.

The pay raise pact includes Orange's first performance-based pay plan, under which teachers whose work is deemed poor will not get annual pay raises. The school board insisted on some form of merit-based pay before it went along with the raises.

Union officials bowed to the school board's plan after getting assurances that teachers who do poor work would get a chance to improve before pay raises were withheld.

Susan Shamey, a marine biology teacher at Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, said she voted against the contract. She said the pay scale is weighted unfairly toward the most inexperienced teachers.

''After 12 years of teaching, I don't like to think I'm only $4,000 ahead of zero experience,'' she said, referring to the proposed $15,000 starting salary.

Because in the past the school board tried to raise pay for beginning teachers while the union favored higher salaries for experienced teachers, mid-level teachers like Shamey have gotten the smallest raises, both sides said.

Karen Burton, 30, a science teacher at Walker Junior High School in Orlando, would get a $900 raise under the new contract. She said she was not happy with that, but voted for it because she feared teachers would be offered less if they rejected it.

''I don't know anybody who's happy with the offer,'' she said. ''I would like to have had a bigger jump. I'm sure the union did the best they could, but it's just not enough.''